


Heart like a harbor

by ninjakins



Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: For Science!, M/M, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Rating May Change, mermaid au, mermaid phichit, mermaid yuuri, scientist victor, victorian era science nerdery
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-04-09
Updated: 2017-04-09
Packaged: 2018-10-16 21:20:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,039
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10579698
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ninjakins/pseuds/ninjakins
Summary: Scientist Victor has fame, wealth, and no more mysteries left to plumb, until he is rescued by the greatest pursuit of his life.(The psuedo-steampunk meramid AU that no one asked for.)-----It was impossible. it was beautiful. The entranced part of Victor cooed while the scientific part of Victor took over. The siren tales of the local sailors came to mind—hist studies of sea shanties had come in handy after all—but no, Victor knew in a heartbeat that what he was looking at was more rare: a genuine...“A mermaid,” Victor breathed. “And you talk!”





	

Victor used to go to the sea to study. But lately, he went to dream.

Sometimes he dreamed about the sea, but not always. Sometimes he dreamed of his study, or the lab, or the coffee salon in London. But the important part wasn't how the dream started, it was how the dream ended. With just a face. No matter what he dreamed, when he napped out here in his boat, he was always pulled slowly to consciousness by a face.

Every time, that stranger's face, half bracketed by the sun, but Victor had experienced the dream often enough to pick out the features. Lovely dark tousled hair, wet and shoved back from a round face that was a composition of milky skin and chocolate brown eyes with depths to get lost in. Sometimes he was smiling, those were the dreams Victor loved the best, but other times it would be just a moment of parted lips and wonder before the dream snatched away. A splash of water hit the gunwhale of the boat too hard and Victor would wake up alone with the sea. And Maccachin.

And Victor's sigh would get caught away by the waves.

Victor Nikiforov was the youngest son of a wealthy family. And as a youngest son of a wealthy family, he was intended to have a Pursuit. Not a pursuit like business that would threaten his elder brother, or charitable philanthropy which would threaten his sister. No, his pursuit should be appropriately frivolous. Which suited Victor because pursuing and frivolity were two of the things Victor was best at.

And when a wealthy gentleman of his time was in pursuit of something frivolous, there was only one answer: the sciences.

Upon reflection, perhaps Victor took to idle pursuit a little too seriously. Perhaps he was a touch too dedicated to his frivolity. It was a problem Victor only realized after publishing papers on marine flora, the sedimentary seashell strata of his family's coastal estate, the sea-faring history of the family's duchy, the mating cycle of the local seals, and one ill-advised, sordid glossary of local sea shanties he wrote in the depths of a vodka bottle one night. He gathered degrees. He became a scholar. He filled lecture halls when he ventured into town to speak. He became a member of the royal scientific society. He became the _president_ of the royal scientific society. Victor was accomplished. Victor was respected. Victor was one of the best minds of his age.

Victor was, point in fact, bored.

He'd been stalled, lacking a new subject of study for months. _Months._ Only his research assistant knew. Even then, he still kept up the confident face of research. Primarily because it was expected of him, but more importantly, because it gave him an excuse to spend most of his days on his small research vessel--a rowing skiff, really--napping with Maccachin and staring forlornly at the the ocean he knew just everything about now.

It was a peaceful, if unsurprising, kind of misery.

Maccachin was normally happy to fulfill his role as nap research assistant, but not today. Victor slowly became aware of sunlight and a movement of shadow. His eyes fluttered open as the boat gave a firm jolt. Maccachin had his front paws precariously braced against the boat side, whining at something in the distance. Victor rolled to his side and peered to the water in search of what had upset her.

A...very nice set of shoulders, graceful arms, human arms... Oh, heavens, someone was _drowning!_ Had there been a ship wreck? Could it have been a swimmer pulled out to sea? Victor floundered for the oars, but the boat had drifted into shallower waters here near the inlet and the boat was caught up in eddies. He saw the drowning man's head disappear beneath the waves and Victor rather lost rational thought. He dove into the water where the man had disappeared.

And a riptide promptly yanked the ocean over his head.

It occurred to Victor, as he tumbled through dark waters and struggled to find the surface that, for a scientist, he had not quite thought this one through. He'd observed the currents, and jumped in anyway. He knew how to swim, of course, as any child who grew up near the sea did. But there was swimming and there was _swimming_. And when it came to a riptide pummeling his ribs with the force of a train, no one could swim. He managed to claw his way to daylight, dragging a gulp of air into his lungs--Maccachin was barking somewhere a far distance off, so still safe on the boat? At least his dog had more sense than he did--before the malicious current eddied and shot him under again.

The water was black. The water was black and he couldn't _breathe_ and Victor was sure he was hallucinating when a darker shape moved over black, a glimmer of ink and pearl skin. Pearl flared even brighter and suddenly it's familiar. That _smile_. That _face._ Victor contemplated that the hallucinations prior to death would make an excellent new paper for the Society.

And then he drowned.

\---

It's the sudden warmth that woke him. He'd swam in a cool gray fog, only halfway cognizant that the world around him had turned from salt water to gritty sand. That hadn't seemed important. What _had_ seemed important was a sudden press of something warm and smooth against his chest--against his _naked_ chest--and that finally brought the world back to Victor's attention.

He opened his eyes, blinking salt and tears away to make out the sky and a half rim of rock. A cove.

Then the warmth against his chest breathed a sigh. Victor looked down and only saw a thicket of silky black hair. Strange lips mumbled against his skin. "Breathing. G--good. And a heartbeat. That's--they need that right? But if he won't wake--"

The head lifted, and revealed a very concerned face. A very _familiar_ concerned face. Brown eyes from his dream seemed to study his lips first before the boy's gaze turned up. Widening slowly as it took another moment for him to process that Victor was awake. Or was he awake? Was this still a dream? It didn't matter.

"Hello!" Victor said, a bit too loud, a bit too excited. It was _him._

The young man practically spiked off his chest with a strangled sound, shoving him back into the sand. Victor winced, rubbing his bruised ribs before he sat up and processed what he was looking at.

The look on the his face was nothing less than utter horror. He was also shirtless. Well formed, but that was all that Victor could admire as he fled. He scuttled backwards with his hands across the sand, making more of those aborted distressed sounds as he dragged his...tail.

And fins.

Ebony mottled with charcoal, grains of sand standing out like invading stars against wetly glistening night. Inky, infinitely delicate scales began at the boy’s waist, thoughtfully following the hard jut of muscle and pelvic bone before multiplying to cover a graceful tail. It narrowed to a point that trailed tissue-thin fins, silvery grey and opalescent in the slanted light of the cove.

It was impossible. it was beautiful. The entranced part of Victor cooed while the scientific part of Victor took over. The siren tales of the local sailors came to mind—hist studies of sea shanties had come in handy after _all—_ but no, Victor knew in a heartbeat that what he was looking at was more rare: a genuine...

“A mermaid,” Victor breathed. “And you talk!”

“No, no, I don’t, no—” The mermaid—no, merman, how rude of him—made a squelched sound that sounded somewhere between a whimper and a squeak and covered his mouth as if it wasn’t quite under his control.

Victor noted his protests as a distant data point, eyes caught up on tracing the filigree of translucent scales that bordered his hips. They were gray as a silver sea and caught the light like crystals against the darker tail and pale skin. “You’re _beautiful_.”

Silver and black disappeared under his outstretched hand. In a blink, the merman had flung himself back onto the rocky outcropping of the water’s edge. His eyes were wide and glistening like the idea of the compliment was still unshed in his eyes. Victor rose, heedless of his lost shirt and torn trousers, and the most delightful pink rose in the boy’s cheeks and—oh, yes, Victor now understood what the shanties said about sirens drawing men out to death.

The young man seemed more concerned with keeping Victor *back* than drawing him near, however. “Wait,” Victor said as the boy cast a measuring glance to the water behind him. “What’s your name?” And then the scientist in him added “At least let me take a photo!”

The man’s eyes widened in horror. Victor glanced around, realizing that his camera was likely back in his boat. With Maccachin....on the open sea. Oh dear. He hoped the boat had been rescued too. He turned, a question on his tongue—

The beautiful merman was gone.

——-

“I _blew it,”_ Yuuri wailed, burying his face in a conviently squishy starfish. “First he saw me and then he—he wanted _a photo_. I must have looked like a _monster._ ”

“I’m sure it wasn’t as bad as all that,” Phichit’s hand rubbed careful circles on his back as he rescued the starfish from a snotty fate. “Perhaps it was a commemorative photo! To remember you!”

“That feels like it somehow makes it worse,” Yuuri sniffed miserably.

“If he’s that cruel, then good riddance. I know you were enchanted, Yuuri, but you were spending too much time on the surface anyway.”

“He was just so...” Yuuri made a vague drift of his hand, which timed well with the drift of red into his cheeks. “He would fall asleep out there. Someone had to watch out for him. His dog is nice. Oh! I hope he found her and the boat I left on the beach.”

“You should adopt a seal pup,” Phichit decided, cradling one of his clownfish on his shoulder and missing the point entirely.

——

Yuri was saying something. Probably very important somethings, as Yuri usually did, things about the Royal Society meeting and this paper or that. No, a very small bit of Victor’s mind tuned in, strike it, not important, just more bout his father threatening to cut his funds. Unimportant, then.

Especially in the face of....well, that face. Beautiful mermen and _who knew what else_ in the sea. The sea he had known every dreary thing about until yesterday afternoon. Victor hummed to himself as he pulled the current charts off their shelf and added them to the growing pile of equipment on the table.

“Oi, _old man_ ,” Yuri rescued his feet from the table before the steel tanks could break his ankle. Yuri Pliesky was on loan from Oxford, one of a dozen young, deliriously talented, appropriately funded geniuses that tended to gather around Victor’s latest Pursuit like gnats, but Yuri had a singular snarl of ambition, a sharp focus, that made him the only research assistant to last.He took a quick inventory of the table, scowl deepening with every tick. “Oceanography? The ocean’s done. There’s nothing you could pull outta the water that’d interest the journals.”

“Unless it’s something new.” Victor felt giddy as he smoothed the maps, securing corners with a ruler, stray fruit, and Yuri’s notebook. The best part of science was the surprise—to the Society, to himself. Science _was_ surprise. That’s what made it perfectly suited for him.

“Like what?” Yuri breathed skepticism.

Victor opened his mouth, but the answer bubbled behind his lips. No. This was his surprise, for a while longer at least. Instead he gave he smiled around a finger at his lips. “I’ve forgotten! But I’ll know it when I see it. Now! We need to rent a boat.”

 _Knew,_ knew it when he saw it. Surprise was beautiful and brown-eyed and black scaled and Victor just knew he would never be bored again.

**Author's Note:**

> I seem to be the only one making Yuuri the mermaid instead of Victor but I STAND BY MY CHOICES, dammit. 
> 
> Let me know if there should be more of this?  
> \-------------  
> say hi on tumblr! otomesnark.tumblr.com


End file.
